明治末期の在日ベトナム人とアジア諸民族連携の試み : 「東亜同盟会」ないしは「亜州和親会」をめぐって

Abstract

This paper discusses the Dong A Dong Minh Hoi, or the "League of East Asia, " an organization which, in his memoirs, Phan Boi Chau claims to have joined in the fall of 1908. Information from Japanese and Chinese sources, however, indicates that the League could not have been established in the second half of 1908, because at that time four of the most important participants listed by P. B. Chau in his memoirs had either left Japan or were in prison. Various Japanese, Chinese and Vietnamese sources further indicate that this League was identical with the Ashu Washinkai, the "Asian Friendship Association." According to Japanese sources, the Association was established in the fall of 1907. a year carlier than P. B. Chau claims. Students of Vietnamese nationalism, relying exclusively on P. B. Chau's memoirs, have concluded that the League was set up when the Japanese authorities, under pressure through French diplomatic channels, started suppressing the Vietnamese movement in Japan, causing P. B. Chau to become disillusioned with Japan. Since the League was established well before Japanese policy turned against the Vietnamese, however, other reasons should be sought for P. B. Chau's decision to join the League. The year 1907 saw a crucial change in official Japanese policy toward her Asian neighbours and the Western colonial powers, which drew criticism from emigres of the other Asian nations who resided in Japan. Through a series of treaties with the Western powers, the Japanese government publicly demonstrated its willingness to cooperate with the colonialists at the expense of the Asian peoples. A few years earlier, after the Russo-Japanese War, many Asian nationalists tended to regard Japan as the champion of the yellow race against the white colonialists. Yet in 1907 the Chinese revolutionaries and Indian activists in Japan, as well as the Japanese socialists. increasingly expressed the idea that Japan was not a friend of Asia but a "common enemy" who belonged to the white imperialists' camp. By the summer of 1907, the Chinese, Indian and Japanese activists were in close contact with each other and with Korean, Phillipino and Vietnamese emigres. P. B. Chau was shocked by Japan's signing of a treaty with the French in June 1907 and abandoned his idea of "relying on Japan." Instead he joined the revolutionaries from other Asian nations and the Japanese socialists in placing their hopes on cooperation between peoples with the "same sickness." By 1907 the term "same sickness" (dong benh in Vietnamese, t'ung ping in Chinese) had become a key word in Chinese arguments for the need for solidarity among the oppressed Asian peoples. Furthermore, in his memoirs and in his letter to Foreign Minister Komura in 1909, P. B. Chau used the opposing terms "universal principle" (cong ly in Vietnamese, kung li in Chinese) and "strong force" (cuong quyen in Vietnamese, ch'iang ch'uang in Chinese) that the Chinese revolutionaries, especially the anarchists, also used : "universal principle" stood for the righteousness of oppressed peoples, and "strong force" for their suppression by imperialists. It is logical to argue that a few years after P. B. Chau came to Japan to seek Japanese assistance, he finally abandoned his reliance on Japan and turned to the building of cooperation among the nationalists of suffering Asia. In seeking Japanese assistance, he had stressed common cultural background, ethnicity, and geographical proximity between Vietnam and Japan, expressed in the phrase "the same culture, the same race, and the same continent." His shift in emphasis to the "same sickness" demonstrates a shift in his identification of the fate of his nation with that of a strong and rich Japan to that of weak and oppressed Asia. Although P. B. Chau shared some opinions with the revolutionaries from other countries, particularly concerning the Japanese attitude toward Asia and the colonial powers, he did not agree with them in every aspect. It is worth ment